Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Let's Eat...

Speaking of food, a visitor asked for some sources for his research paper on how the Jewish dietary laws and customs helped forge Jewish identity. We referred him to David Kraemer’s Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (London and New York, Routledge, 2007) (BM710 .K73 2007), which treats food as a community marker differentiating both Jew from Gentile, and Jew from Jew. Other sources are: Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus’ article “Meat-Eating and Jewish Identity: Ritualization of the Priestly ‘Torah of Beast and Fowl’ [Lev11:45] in rabbinic Judaism and Medieval Kabbalah” in AJS Review 24:2 (1999) p. 227-262; Paulette Kershenovich’s article “Evoking the Essence of the Divine: the Construction of Identity Through Food in the Syrian Jewish Community in Mexico” in Nashim, 5 (Fall 2002), p. 105-128; and Orit Rozin’s article “Food, Identity and National-Building in Israel’s Formative Years” in Israel Studies Forum 21:1 (2006) p. 52-80.